Empty Rooms
After Charlotte Mew’s
‘Rooms’,
“Rooms where for good
or ill – things died”. P 26, Modern Women Poets
The sad empty feeling
I get
Like stepping into a ruin of a house
An abandoned room
Bereft of habitation
Peeling paint in an
industrial mint blue
A sick, gut drop
I’m in it
The smell of fustiness
Mixed with rotted
leaves.
Poetry
It takes me
Drags me where I
would not walk.
A word
Is removal from my
bed, my armchair
To this empty room.
This room with
splintered ceiling letting in
Harsh sun light
A metal bed frame
Exposed concrete
I’m here - I’m
straight here
This is my sad place
This is my desolation
My empty pit.
Where is that child?
The one I never saw
with my real eyes?
Apart from
The flow of blood,
the flood of blood
Which swept her away
This child
Who would be now
10 or 11.
Cloth of glowing
colours floating in a Turkish sky
The sun
Making transparencies
of
The woven lengths
In rich blues and
magentas.
And they say
It will pass
You’ll get over it
Try for another one
It wasn’t meant to be
Nature’s way of
getting rid of a mistake.
They could be right.
And they are all wrong
too.
This was my child
And I loved her and
understood what it is
To bear a child, to
be a mother
In my own way.
I was ready
She was deeply wanted
And is fathoms deep
missed
Oceans wide longed
for
Mountains high
mourned for
Lakes wide reflected
upon
this mystery.
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